Love it, but it can be very expensive if you want to stay competitive. Because the strategy involved is so spread out, there's no one perfect deck, and you can have all kinds of strategy involved but it's up to what cards you've included--which of course comes at a cost (literally). I mostly play with newly released cards. The OG cards would be a pain to use today because they wouldn't be able to compete due to the high energy cost and low attack power. But I still get the OG cards to collect!
When the TCG was new in the States, I was at my dad's Xmas party at work and they bought the kids booster packs. I pulled a foil Gyarados in my first and only pack and I've been hooked since. I started playing, though, only about ten years ago through the online version.
Ahh, that makes sense. I would love to collect cards again (no real reason other than I'm drawn to collecting things, lol - so I will be holding off for sure), and of course wouldn't have anyone to play with anyway so won't be doing that. I never drew any great cards from booster packs, but I did always love the excitement of it.
Jealous of your foil Gyarados!
You should try it! It's free and they give you starter decks.
God damn it, romevi!! I tried it last night thinking there was no way I'd be interested (a virtual TCG game? why would that be fun? all I ever did with TCGs was collect them, the game never made sense). I'm totally hooked.
) This is exactly what the TCG should have been all along! I've very quickly realized that the issue I had in my childhood was that I never really understood the rules or bothered to learn them. I think the digital format works incredibly well for this sort of game, since it makes the barrier to entry so low and accessible. Also, the whole not needing to spend actual money on cards to build a good deck is a huge help - I was always fearful of that aspect too (which is why I have never tried to get into MTG).
For reference, I have never played any sort of tabletop deck building game, so I have no experience with them (again, always considered them too complicated and involved).